the majority of americans supports raising taxes on people who make $250,000 or more. a bigger number of americans support that than voted for president obama. that's one issue. separately is how do we bring down our deficit? do we attack social security entitlements, medicare, medicaid and that's this ideological struggle we're seeing between democrats and republicans that will continue in a series of skirmishes probably over the debt ceiling come february and ongoing until they finally have it out and resolve this for the long term. >> i think the white house's view in political terms is that how he handles himself on this sets the terms of engagement for those subsequent fights. again, a few weeks ago, when i was talking to people at the white house about how they were going to strategize this, they said look, this is a re-set moment and we've got to re-set sort of the balance of power from the 2011 talks. >> i think it's worth emphasizing on the numbers you mentioned the public overwhelming supports raises faxes on the wealthy but on the spending cuts they oppose c